LOVE LOVES –
May 28, 2025 – This essay is adapted from “The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex” By the turn of the century, my lovers were increasingly women, which meant I finally had orgasms with other people. But I was still trying to play the cool girl and enjoy casual sex, even though I seemed constitutionally incapable; I always ended up committed. Probably because, underneath that relaxed exterior, I was anything but casual. My ability to seduce and capture my partners was a primary source of my self-esteem. Once partnered, however, it was I who felt captive — to an overwhelming desire to please them.
After one particularly damaging relationship ended in my early 30s, it occurred to me that I should take a break. Immediately after this revelation, I promptly got into five brief, consecutive entanglements. Each had a frantic quality, like the last handful of popcorn you cram into your mouth after you decide to stop eating it. I was jumpy, tired and easily disgusted. My shoulders throbbed, tightened by anxiety’s winch while I slept. I was clearly depressed. I realized that my desire to pause would have to be more intentional, a resolution. I drew more specific boundaries: no sex, no dates, no flirting. It was time to meet myself unmediated by romantic and erotic obsession.
